The Key To Personal Branding for UX Designers
Personal branding has a huge, and I mean HUGE outcome on our ability to land our next source of income, whether that be for landing our next freelance gig, contract position or a full-time job.
To highlight how important personal branding is, I want you to imagine that you are a farmer responsible for a huge plot of land.
The soil quality is ideal for growing crops, you get plenty of rainfall to keep the crops in good shape, and you have the necessary equipment at your fingertips to keep the crops healthy.
But there is a catch; the nearest grocery store is 100 miles away, and you don’t have a car. So you have to make the best of your current situation, by tending to your crops and ensuring they are growing regularly.
It’s the same with your online presence; tending to LinkedIn and other platforms regularly to make valuable connections, engaging content and such is what will get you seen by people who can have a positive impact on your career.
Or at least, that is what would happen in a perfect world.
Often times, producing regular online content is the adult equivalent of getting your kid to eat broccoli or brussel sprouts, especially when you are in a comfortable job and are under the illusion that you do not need to network.
I will admit that I am guilty of that too; obviously this time in particular has proven that our jobs are more unstable than they appear to be as a result of COVID layoffs happening left and right.
So how can personal branding help your prospects?
Think about how you, and most people out there find jobs. Does it involve talking to people who you have formed a connection with, whom know of opportunities and can vouch for you (as a result of a long, mutual professional relationship)?
Or does it involve going on job boards and blindly sending out your resume to a bunch of companies you have never even heard of who have a position open?
For the vast majority of people, it is the latter. And yet, according to Richard Bolles of “What Color Is Your Parachute”, resumes have a 4% success rate.
And yet, it is estimated that between 70% — 80% of jobs out there are NOT advertised.
Yes, you read that right. The vast majority of jobs available are NOT advertised. The reason for that is simple; posting jobs takes too much time, effort and resources from the company’s HR department, or in the case of a small startup, it’s founders. They are busy people, and they would rather devote their time to other, more pressing matters.
It’s far easier for the hiring managers and current employees to personally recommend someone they know than it is to comb through 300+ applications to find the person who they deem to be the best fit.
So while people who tend to their connections regularly are able to find jobs much easier based on who they know and how strong of a LinkedIn presence they have, the vast majority of people are fighting for the rest of the 20% — 30% of jobs that are advertised, often facing really high competition, applicant tracking system (ATS) bots that will throw out your resume if you don’t have enough of the right job keywords (even if you are more than qualified), hiring managers only spending a few seconds looking at your resume, and a series of long, complicated interviews before you are even considered for the position.
Just let that sink in. The vast majority of job seekers are not utilizing LinkedIn and their connections to its fullest ability (if at all). In the farm example, these individuals are not tending to their crops with water, love and care on a daily, or even weekly basis. They are instead, blindly firing off their resume when they need a new job.
The problem is, most people do not start actively using LinkedIn and making themselves known online until after they have had the rug pulled out from underneath themselves. This is like having an empty field that you didn’t grow anything in until you are starving, and then decide that is the time to start growing crops.
You could be an incredibly skilled UX designer, having worked on ambitious projects, lead a huge team, and increased your company’s ROI by a massive amount.
But if no one knows who you are, you may as well not exist. This is especially true online; if you have a sparse (or nonexistent) online presence, that is dramatically hurting your chances of being seen by people who can make a positive impact in your career.
I will admit that this is part of why I write articles on Medium; sure it’s fun to teach subjects and engage with people, but it also gets me seen by potential change makers and allows me to forge long-term connections, too.
And you can do the same, too. As a UX career coach, I always think about the next step I want the person engaging with my content to take, whether that is to connect with me on LinkedIn, view a webinar, get on my email list, etc. That is where CTAs from your content comes into play, and it is a great way to encourage people to engage with you beyond your content, as well as your portfolio work.
So how do you boost your personal branding skills?
First off, it goes without saying that you should be on LinkedIn, often and frequently. This is where a lot of magic happens. As I mentioned, a friend of mine Tim Salau, CEO and co founder of Guide, landed his first job out of his masters program at Microsoft from engaging with people on LinkedIn and creating his Facebook group, Mentors and Mentees.
And after that, he landed a position as a Chief Evangelist Officer at WeWork, through… you guessed it… personal branding on LinkedIn!
And it also allowed him to find his business partners for his startup, solely through his personal connections he built over time.
People land jobs from connections they meet on LinkedIn all of the time, without applying, but instead focusing on advertising what you are capable of doing, publishing thought leadership content, and forging long-term connections.
And if “networking” sounds like a four letter word to you, it shouldn’t. When we think of networking, we think of fancy cocktail events, awkwardly handing out business cards, and hoping someone notices us among a sea of people.
Fortunately, that is not what LinkedIn is about. Here, you get to engage with content published by other people, create your own case studies and thought leadership content, and make meaningful connections with people.
You don’t know where these connections will lead, so make sure you are shining bright, being a positive influence on LinkedIn and making positive associations everywhere you go.
Perhaps you mentored someone on LinkedIn a few years ago, and now they are at a company you would love to work at where they can give you a recommendation. Maybe you frequently engage with people on LinkedIn who become meaningful mentors. Maybe one of your connections just founded a startup and wants you to join as a UX lead and co founder.
Whatever the case, don’t think of it as “networking”, but instead think of it as building meaningful, human-to-human connections with people over the long run.
Furthermore, study how people with a ton of followers on LinkedIn structure their online presence. It goes without saying that you need a good image, and as I stated in one of my other articles, you need a good headline, too.
If you have any images of yourself giving a speech, leading a workshop, or even something meaningful that ties you and your professional standing together, I highly recommend using that.
Also look at how they produce content. There is a certain structure to how people post content, and why they say what they say. For example, Brigette Hyacinth is a “LinkedIn Influencer” who often uses a structure like this when making a LinkedIn post:
- She tells a story of something that happened in her professional career
- She often challenges a common social norm we see, in a positive and encouraging tone
- She then follows it up with the concluding line; “Agree?”
This is brilliant, because she is engaging the reader with her personal messaging, drawing in people who see things the way she does, and gets them to engage with the “Agree” statement, encouraging them to respond. The more people who comment, the more LinkedIn shows the post to other people, who then comment and further extend her visibility and network.
My suggestion is to be active on LinkedIn, plus at least one other platform, such as Twitter, Medium, etc. Not only does that expand your reach and visibility, but it also allows you to cross-post your content across platforms.
So what kind of LinkedIn content can you produce?
This is where you can get really creative. First off, have a strong sense of who you are talking to, and what emotions, actions and outcomes you want to convey to your audience. And secondly, make it personal! This is your voice and your brand, after all.
Here are some suggestions of ways you can get started:
- Tell an emotionally gripping story about how you got to this point in your career, and what lessons you have learned that people in those shoes can learn from.
- Post a link to one of your signature portfolio pieces. Make several posts throughout the year (peppered in with your other content, of course) talking about the outcomes, achievements, and measurable metrics that increased KPIs for that project. Take a different angle with every post.
- Interview someone with both of your webcams on, and post 30 second snippets of gold you got from that interview.
- Talk about an opinion or observation you have that is related to UX design.
- Write an article on LinkedIn or on Medium about industry trends in user experience design and share it on LinkedIn.
- Share content created by other people and post your perspective along with it on your profile.
- Talk about what challenges and lessons you have learned throughout your career. This makes it more human and relatable.
- And most importantly, MAKE SURE YOU ARE USING HASHTAGS!
In addition to LinkedIn (which as I said EVERYONE should be on and actively using), use these other mediums to generate content (not a comprehensive list, but it’s a start):
- If you like writing, publish articles on Medium and LinkedIn and link to your LinkedIn profile or your portfolio at the end of your articles for Medium (you will see that I do this as well). As I stated, this is a great CTA to engage people to connect with you. And you never know who will connect with you, either, so keep your feelers out there!
- You could start a podcast. Again, if this sounds intimidating, it shouldn’t be. I have done this before, and I did it with minimal equipment available. Find people on LinkedIn, authors of UX books (and also blogs) who are doing cool things in the UX world and ask if you can interview them about their experiences. Not only will this build your online credibility, but it also allows you to forge a new potential long-term connection, and it is a great opportunity to learn about their subject matter expertise first hand. It’s basically hitting three birds with one stone!
- Start a Youtube channel featuring trends, insights and interviews within the world of UX (again, link to your portfolio, LinkedIn or whatever else you want people to go to next).
- Go to conferences, universities and bootcamps and give a speech, hold a workshop, etc. Even if you don’t feel like you are qualified or that gnarly imposter syndrome is eating at you, know that we all experience it. I have met UX designers with far more experience than me who are afraid to have a strong LinkedIn and online presence, write articles or make Youtube videos, out of fear of not being good enough. It happens to everyone, including myself. But you HAVE to overcome it if you want the system to work well for you.
It is so important to maintain a strong online presence, and to get yourself seen. If you have to make a calendar of content you will publish, on what medium and what time, do it. And it’s easier to create content than you may think.
For example, I can write an article on Medium, copy and paste it into a LinkedIn article, share the overview of the article from Medium on LinkedIn, and pull a dozen quotes from the article, while periodically linking back to a single article.
So for example:
Medium article (1) + LinkedIn article (1) + Share overview of Medium article on LinkedIn, announcing I just wrote the article (1) + link back to the article with a pull quote on Medium every so often (12)
Guess what? That’s one article allows you to produce 15 pieces of content.
Gary Vaynerchuck, founder of VaynerMedia and one of todays most iconic entrepreneurs, swears by one’s ability to produce content regularly as an incredibly effective way to get seen by the people who can make a huge difference for you. And often times, the content you produce is the same content re-shared in different ways.
In fact, later last year he released an incredibly powerful slideshow on how you can produce 64 pieces of content, per day (I highly recommend you open that link in a new tab and review it after reading through this article).
While LinkedIn is not like Instagram or TikTok in terms of the type of content that resonates with audiences that gravitate towards that platform, the fact still remains that being active on LinkedIn and creating your own content is king, and it gets people seen, not only at companies you applied to, but also for the 70% - 80% of jobs that exist and aren’t advertised.
“What if I am shy? I don’t want anyone to criticize my ideas/I don’t know enough”
This is an unfortunate, but very common reason why people don’t post any content; they are afraid of what other people will think of them.
I even clearly remember talking with a colleague of mine who had several years of experience more than me and was the lead UX designer at a very large, recognizable entertainment chain.
She saw the amount of content I regularly produced on LinkedIn. She saw that I was running my own UX podcast, and that I often voice my opinions on LinkedIn, even if they are not popular ones.
I told her that this is an essential survival skill in the job market, and I was encouraging her to do the same as to build her own personal brand.
Her response?
She said she is does not want to produce any UX related content or post on LinkedIn, out of fear of being criticized. And here she is, someone far more senior in experience compared to me (at the time), stating that she admires my willingness to write articles and voice my opinions, and simultaneously saying she would not do it, because she is worried about what people would think of her.
Needless to say, I was a bit flabbergasted to hear that.
A week before I had that conversation with her, I posted a a somewhat controversial video on LinkedIn where I highlighted why I firmly believe that UX/UI is a horrendously overused, awful title and that way too many jobs ask for unicorns, way too many people try to become one (and advertise themselves as such), and why that does not help our industry as a whole.
To this day, the title UX/UI still makes me cringe. I like to joke that if unicorns are so abundant, we should replace the title “UX unicorn” with something far more common, like “UX dairy cow”.
It’s a firm belief I have held for a long time, but I felt the need to address this very prevalent issue I see in the UX design community, knowing full well that it would generate controversy, step on some toes and receive negative feedback.
And guess what?
Turns out, I underestimated HOW engaging the video would be. It got over 75 comments and had been viewed by more than 2000 people in the span of 24 hours, becoming by far, the most viewed piece of content I have ever posted on LinkedIn. As expected, some of the UX designers, ranging from newbies to industry veterans, told me I was wrong and then tried to convince me to “see the light” (human psychology does not work like that, but that is a topic for another day).
But it also drew many people in the community whom held the exact same belief as me to quickly jump to my aide. Again, their experience levels ranged from newbies to industry veterans who had been in this field forever, even before they called it “User Experience”.
Holy guacamole, Batman!
Did I get negative reactions from that video? Absolutely. The conversations got heated, at least by LinkedIn standards as people tried to argue with me, as well as each other about their counter-opinions.
But I also formed a lot more connections with people who felt the exact same way as me, got my page a lot more visibility, and most importantly, it reminded me that having a controversial opinion did not in fact, kill me or cause me physical pain in any way.
The next day, I was not injured, I still had fresh food in my pantry and fridge, and the sun did not crash into the earth and kill everyone just because I upset a few people.
It’s perfectly okay to voice opinions that do not align with other people’s views, and it gets often necessary conversations started among our community. And you won’t die if you post something and someone says it’s stupid. Their opinion does not control you, and everyone eventually forgets and moves on anyway.
Now, I am not saying you need to publish content like that. But if you can’t handle people criticizing your ideas, you are going to have an extremely rough time as a UX designer, which is a field full of subjectivity where you can experience death from 1000 opinions, if you are not careful. And worse, you are denying yourself the opportunity to teach others, establish your knowledge and credibility as a UX professional, and actually get seen for those 70% — 80% of jobs that are never posted or advertised.
And I am not going to say that I haven’t experienced that anxiety myself.
In fact, growing up I was the awkward, nerdy, quiet kid who didn’t have the guts to ask anyone on a simple coffee date, much less to prom. I realize that every time I publish something, I risk getting criticized. I get nervous, just like everyone else.
But I also realize that what would be far worse is to stay quiet, blend in, not make connections, and not be seen as credible in this space and take control of my UX career, on my own terms.
Please remember that you are a professional user experience designer. Every time you apply for a job, you are selling your skills and what you can deliver that will provide your employer with far more revenue than they would pay you for, therefore making your employment worth their time.
You need to show what you are capable of doing within this space, highlight your knowledge and expertise, and get seen. And please don’t let excuses that can be easily overcome get in the way of getting yourself seen.
“I don’t know where to start”
That’s easy! I definitely recommend that if you don’t have a strong LinkedIn presence, start by sharing someone else’s content that you agree with, and add your opinion. Make a couple comments on people’s posts. I also recommend talking about certain UX topics as you learn them, and your opinions and what you learned about said topic.
When I started my UX podcast, I was simply reaching out to people on LinkedIn who had interesting titles and I interviewed them, just for the sake of learning from industry veterans and creating visibility for my LinkedIn page. I had no idea what I was doing; I just winged it. And guess what? People loved it!
Furthermore, did you complete any really awesome portfolio work? If so, share it on LinkedIn and talk about how your involvement increased the overall outcome of the site/app/digital product you worked on. Not only is it a great way to get feedback, but it gets your portfolio seen by more people!
It is far better to get started before you have a clue what you are doing, than it is to wait until everything is “perfect”, or to avoid posting anything our of fear.
“Do not wait: the time will never be ‘just right’. Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.” — Napoleon Hill
“Does this actually work?”
People who have a strong online presence and are active on LinkedIn find jobs every single day through connections they make. And not necessarily from job postings, but from talking to people, sharing their knowledge and work, asking for feedback and being that person who pops up on everyone’s feed, time and time again.
As I stated, my friend Tim got a job at both Microsoft and WeWork, and built his startup team from connections on LinkedIn and from members of the Mentors and Mentees group he created. He didn’t wait for anyone’s permission to get started, and neither should you.
And his story is not unique; there are millions upon millions of people like him, whom get interviews and job offers all of the time, through their LinkedIn connections.
You are not losing anything by having a strong presence on LinkedIn and other platforms, but you most certainly are losing out by not being on any of them.
So you tell me; do you know for a fact that something works (or does not work) before you have even tried it once, let alone multiple times?
In conclusion
The content you produce online and how you brand yourself is critical, and although it’s not necessarily difficult or time-consuming to create, it is something that should be tended to regularly. And please don’t let excuses or fear stand in your way. Life is too short for that.
I also wrote an article on the importance of having a strong LinkedIn headline, which you can read here.
And feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn! I enjoy expanding my network and connecting with new people :)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharperux/
